Eduardo Angel (Colombia)

When I was 12 years old, I ran away from home. It was only for 5 days, and it was for a good cause, I wanted to see the ocean. Since then, I discovered that I have a nomad’s soul. I always dreamed about being free, with no home, no walls, and no roots. I wanted to be a world’s citizen, belong to the place where my feet landed. I went to Colombia a few months ago to see my family after a year and a half. On my first day there, somebody shot one of my best friends five times in the head. Nobody knows who did it or why. That doesn’t really matter in a country with 99% of impunity. She was my travel partner. Now she is dead.
A few days later, another friend told me that he was leaving the country because he was kidnapped. The next day, another friend died and the same night I almost died in a bar. Somebody left a car with 100 kg of dynamite just a few doors away from the bar I was at. Out of our group of twenty friends, now just have only 4 in Cali, my home city, two of whom are waiting for papers to go out of the country.
I’m a stranger everywhere I go, because I don’t belong anywhere; I don’t have roots anymore. That’s something I have been looking for, but for the first time my dream came true. And I don’t like it. I have no country or home. I’m here, in a very expensive college, studying photography. But my sister, my parents and grandparents are in Colombia. What should I do? Should I go back to my country, take a gun, and fight, and die? Or should I stay here and take “nice” pictures?